As treatment for an ischemic tissue, such as treatment for myocardial infarction, for example, invasive treatment by surgery has been conventionally performed. This method is highly invasive to and imposes a significant burden on patients.
In order to address the above problem, a method for performing treatment by using shockwaves has been developed. In this therapy, cardiac muscle tissues which are damaged due to narrowing or obstruction of a part of the coronary artery of heart are irradiated with weak shockwaves for treatment. It is known that irradiation of an ischemic tissue with shockwaves would provide a therapeutic effect for accelerating regeneration of new blood vessels. This therapy is noninvasive and therefore imposes less burden on patients. As an example device for use with such a therapy, a device which is described in Patent Document 1 has been known. This device is an application of a lithotripsy device in which an affected area is irradiated with shockwaves whose output has been weakened compared to the output of a lithotripsy device.
In this type of device, as it is not possible to obtain an image within a living organism by a shockwave irradiation head, it is necessary to further provide a separate ultrasound diagnosis device for specifying a portion to be irradiated and so on. Further, as it is not possible to place the ultrasound diagnosis probe at the same position as the shockwave irradiation head, a diagnosis image is captured by the ultrasound diagnosis device from a visual point and in a line of sight that are different from those of the shockwave irradiation head.
Meanwhile, Patent Document 2 discloses a device which irradiates a wound area caused by bone fracture, decubitus bedscore, or the like, with ultrasound pulses, to thereby facilitate angiogenesis.
Further, Patent Document 3 discloses a system which performs treatment and imaging processing with a single transducer (see particularly paragraphs 0044 and 0045 and FIGS. 7A and 7B). While this apparatus is mainly aimed at treatment of a superficial tissue for cosmetic purposes, angiogenesis is described as one of the therapy effects (see particularly paragraphs 0013 and 0026).
Also, Patent Document 4 discloses an apparatus which stimulates a portion suffering from myocardial infarction, a fractured portion, a portion of orthodontic treatment, or the like, with ultrasound irradiation intensively for a predetermined time period, thereby achieving therapy effects. In this apparatus, a single transducer is caused to perform irradiation of stimulating pulse waves and irradiation of ultrasound observation pulse waves in a switchable manner, thereby enabling follow-up of the irradiated portion.